As sales professionals with quotas, prospects, clients, meetings, admin work, follow up activities and so on, we rarely get a chance (or take the chance) to stop and think about what we’re doing.  If we did we’d realize some of what we’re doing could be done a lot better and some shouldn’t be done at all. We need to pick our heads up every once in a while and not get caught up “doing” so much all the time. If we do pick our heads up and think for a while it’s amazing sometimes what we can come up with. Why do you think some of our best ideas come to us in the shower or lying in bed?  It’s because we’ve stopped “doing” and our brain is finally getting a chance to catch up.

So what should we think about?  Anything. As long as it’s for a designated amount of time and you’re focused on it.  Pick an issue you’re having related to a certain aspect of the sales process (cold calling, gatekeepers, negotiations, a specific objection, etc.).  Write down the problem and desired result (i.e. goal).  Then lock yourself in a quiet room with a white board or put some ear plugs in and grab a blank piece of paper and start brainstorming ideas.  See what you come up with.

Also, don’t leave this to chance or try to remember to do this whenever you have time. Make the time. As VP of Sales for a previous company I set a recurring block of 15 minutes on me and my team’s calendars at the end of every day that simply said “Think” in the subject line. It was a visual reminder to just stop what we were doing and think about what we did that day and how we could get better tomorrow.  I was amazed at what used to come out of that time. Give it a try, see what happens.